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Similes
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Aschenbach's Career :
In a passage saturated with situational irony, the narrator contrasts the "dignity" of Aschenbach's career as a celebrated writer with the shamefulness of his behavior at the end of the novel, as he recklessly pursues Tadzio across Venice as a dangerous outbreak of cholera sweeps through the city:
He sat there, the master, the artist who had attained dignity, the author of “A Miserable Man,” who in such exemplarily pure form had renounced bohemianism and the murky depths, had abrogated his sympathy for the abyss and had vilified vileness; the man who had ascended the heights; the one who had overcome his learning and outgrown all irony, who had grown accustomed to the obligations imposed by the confidence of the masses; he whose fame was official, whose name had been ennobled and whose style boys were exhorted to take as a model—he sat there, his eyes closed [...]
Related Themes:
